Vacation

Ben’s dad is a food delivery driver. Holly’s dad is the king. Cool that they get to hang out with each other. Oh dear, King is kind of a jerk. When he realizes that Mr. Elf is overworked, he commands him to take a holiday, which is great. But he tells Nanny Plum she can take over the route while Mr. Elf is gone. So there is an assumption that Nanny’s work is expendable, and that her post will be okay without her. And he actually says, “Any fool can drive a truck!” Talk about lack of respect for work!

They do a poor job with storylines. Nanny Plum is a terrible delivery drive because she decides to give people new things instead of what they always order. This is simply cleared up by bringing Mr. Elf home.

Ok, Mrs. Elf is cool. Mr. Elf comes home and says he has terrible news (don’t worry, it is just the news that he has to take a holiday), and she goes full-on Marxist: “Revolution! Up with the elves, down with the King!” complete with horn.

Photo by Martin Lopez from Pexels

Mr. Elf thinks they should fly somewhere (elves have their own airline), have a snack, and be home in time for evening deliveries. But Mrs. Elf insists they will go somewhere hot for at least a week.

Off they go!

Mr. Elf won’t let Holly bring her wand. No magic. And no pets (sorry, Gaston, the Ladybird). It is cool that the ladybird is male. Ah, but he barks. Hmm

Oh wait, the elf plane is actually just a family plane. That delivery route must pay well. Maybe not though, because the plane just crashed into the ocean.

I suppose the reason that Holly had to leave her wand was so that they could be really, truly stuck there. However, no one mentions the lack of a wand again, so viewers are not reminded that Holly can’t help out because her magic is back at home.

I will not go into spoilers except to say there was a happy ending.

What about science?

Once again, I am disappointed in the science on this show. Kids’ shows don’t have to be to the letter, but come on, at least try.

They lived off of a coconut they found. Setting aside the fact that this tiny elf was able to scale the tree and knock the coconut down, there are some unanswered questions.

How did they get:

The coconut open?

Flour for pie crust?

Fire?

Clean water?

They were gone for weeks and the king wasn’t sending out everybody to find his daughter?

Honey Bees

The second episode I watched had to do with bees, but either never explained or badly explained beekeeping, honey making, and swarming.

This is so frustrating. Kids are sponges. They can learn science when it is a their level and fun.

A fairy is a main character. It would have been adorable for her to don a little beekeeper’s suit with space for the wings and fly into the hive with the smoker to make the bees drowsy. Instead the fairy puts a sleep spell on the bees (that doesn’t last long enough, but that is not seen as a flaw). Mr. Rogers must be rolling in his grave!!

There is a beekeeper’s suit of sorts. The beekeeper elf throws on a bee suit and says that the bees will think he is the queen bee and will follow him out of the hive. Yet another missed opportunity to teach about science.

Analysis

It is a cute premise, but there are so many missed opportunities for teaching.

Dignity of labor and the importance of job training could have been worked in. After Mrs. Elf jumps into Strike-mode, she learns that Mr. Elf is simply being forced to take a vacation and then she is okay. She doesn’t think about the fact that the schedule is set up in a way that is inherently unfair to her husband, or that giving the route to the nanny will harm the reputation of her husband’s business because the nanny is not concerned about customer service.

There were opportunities for team work which were either not shown, resulted in an outside rescue, or were swept away with magic. And of course, the science issue. If your show touches on science, teach science!

For the tally, this show doesn’t really have a male or female lead. Although the show is named for the two 2 kids, they don’t feel like leads. I guess they are, in that they are in every scene, but the story is just as much about the people around them and we don’t learn their point of view and they do not have their own problems to solve nor do they save the day. So all counts are staying the same, except the number of shows watched.